FLORA — It had been 276 days since the Carroll Cougars last took the football field.

They couldn’t wait any longer.

Monday was the first official day of high school football practice.

At 12:01 a.m., the Cougars busted through a banner through the smoke clouds and took the field in front of an estimated 200 fans.

“I felt like I was getting ready to play a game,” senior quarterback/defensive back Trey Filbrun said. “I was really excited for this practice.”

It wasn’t your typical start to the season.

Players pulled into the high school parking lot with lights already shining over their home field. Fans lined the fence and sat in the bleachers. Cheerleaders performed their routines and a mix of Carroll football trivia questions and music blared from the stadium speakers.

“I think you can see just by the number of people here that they are excited about the upcoming season,” Carroll athletic director Camden Parkhurst said.

Indeed they should be.

The Cougars are coming off a 10-1 season a year ago, the lone loss to Class A No. 1 Central Catholic in the sectional semifinal. Carroll won the Hoosier Heartland Conference title and after a thrilling 44-42 Week 1 win over Tri-County, won the next nine games by at least two touchdowns.

Eight starters on both sides of the ball are back.

“Last year we knew we could be good, but we didn’t know how good we could be.,” senior lineman Darren Dillon said. “Now that we see how good we are, we see that we can go the whole way and compete with anybody on the field in 1A.”

There has been some attrition.

Carroll graduated four starters, including last year’s Journal & Courier Small School Defensive Player of the Year Dylan Spesard. Head coach Mark Brown left to join the coaching staff at North Central and offensive coordinator Kevin Sayler was promoted from within.

When he was approached by a few team parents about kicking the season off with a midnight practice, it seemed a natural way to drive community support.

“We don’t get many opportunities to do fun things like this a lot of times with high school football,” said Sayler, a 1999 Southmont graduate. “A lot of the time, we’re pretty serious. But we’re having a little fun with this and making it a special night and hopefully some of the kids enjoy it.”

When the final whistle blew at 1:30 a.m., it was clear they had.

“There’s a lot of hype in the locker room. Everyone was yelling. I don’t have a voice out here,” senior linebacker Isaac Doerflein said. “I definitely didn’t think anybody was going to come out. We got a pretty good crowd for midnight.”

It started with a pre-practice speech from principal Tiffany Myers.

It ended with a touchdown pass.

It was the first taste of football that the Cougars had been starving for since last October.

“We were humbled at the end of the season when we lost, so I think everyone has been hungry in the offseason,” Filbrun said.

Contact high school sports reporter Sam King at sking@journalandcourier.com. Follow him on Twitter @samueltking